Latest Results Confirm: This Is the Best Time to Buy a House and List Your Home

According to recent surveys, certain months are better for house buyers and sellers than others. Here’s what the latest results obtained from real estate databases said and which is actually the best time to buy a house or list your home.

We all know that the exact time you choose to purchase a service or an item is very important and that comparing prices and making the right decision at the right time can pay off big time.

Just think about plane tickets, whose price can skyrocket within just a few hours, leaving you with either no ticket or an almost empty pocket.

The situation with selling and buying a house might not be as severe and as fluctuating as with plane tickets, but time definitely has a big impact on how and when people actually decide on selling a house or buying a property.

Here is what real estate agents know about the market tendencies that can help you time your undertaking properly and get to know which would be the best time to buy a house or list a home and thereby save a lot of money.

Which Is the Best Time to List a Home?

How to know which is the best time to buy a house?

One thing you might already have heard is to list your home at the beginning of the year in order to be able to sell by June or July.

However, data obtained by the National Association of Realtors indicates that this piece of advice isn’t in accordance with current real estate tendencies, which say that the average home sold was on the real estate market for about 4 weeks. So, why list it in January then?

In her article entitled the best time to sell a house, Rebecca Shapiro states that May is the best time to list a house. According to her, homes listed during the first two weeks of May sold exactly 18.5 days faster than other homes. This is quite an advantage if you consider that houses usually sell in about one month’s time, according to the National Association for Realtors.

Another important point of this is, that apart from selling quickly, these homes also sold for 1% more than the average listing. As a home owner, you’d get $2,000 more if you sold your $200.000 house in May!

In Zillow Talk: Rewriting the Rules of Real Estate, Rascoff and Humphries analyzed the real estate landscape with regard to the best time so sell or buy a home. They came to the conclusion that the best time to list a home is mid-March to mid-April.

Another interesting thing they found out is that weather patterns play a crucial role in this: the best time to list greatly depends and is in directly linked to the particular weather pattern of the area.

This means, in fact, that places with a warmer climate have good selling conditions all year round, while places with heavy winters should aim for warmer months, such as April.

Shapiro’s results and those of Rascoff and Humphries point into the same direction: by paying attention to these specific time frames, you can not only speed up the selling process, you can also make more money: depending on the market, you could even get up to 2% more than the average listing price (which could easily mean 10,000+).

Zillow even offers a tool which can help you analyze the particular market situation with regard to the ideal listing time by zip code. You enter the zip code of the town where you selling your home and find out which would be the best month to list your home for this particular location.

Mark di Vicenzo shared a very cool tip in his article about the best time to sell a home. According to a few recent studies that analyzed real estate market behavior, people perceive exact prices, for example $197,945 as actually lower than rounded ones, such as $180,000. So, not pricing your house with a zero at the end could mean extra money for you!

Is there a best day to list your home?

Yes, there is!

According to di Vicenzo, the best day to list your home is Thursday. There are multiple reasons for that:

• By listing your home on a Thursday, potential buyers will be able to visit showings on Saturday and Sunday, which are both very important days of the real-estate week.
• On Saturday, your home will have shown only a couple of days. This matters a lot, because chances are better to receive a full-price offer with a home that has not been on the market for a very long time.

Which Is the Best Time to Buy a Home and Make an Offer on a Home?

Realtor.com states that more than half of all sold homes are sold during the summer. But the lowest prices for sold homes are achieved during colder months, especially in January.

While some real estate experts suggest making an offer between November and December in order to get a good deal, others say that January is not only the best month regarding low prices, but also the best month if you’re looking to make an offer on a house.

Due to the fact that the weather is usually not very nice in January, fewer people decide to go house-hunting during this time of the year. Less competition translates into fewer bidding wars and much better chances of obtaining a great place for an even greater price.

Also, many people are still financially recovering from Christmas expenses and credit card bills, which is why many of them choose to wait for more stable months. House hunters know this and take advantage of the fact that they simply have more possibilities during low seasons.

It’s still important to mention that your particular market might look very different from the areas that have been covered in the above-mentioned research. The best time to buy a house in Chicago doesn’t necessarily mean that this is also the best time to buy a house in Houston.

Your realtor will be able to let you in on this. They will appreciate the fact that you know a few tricks from the real estate business, but that you still value their expertise of the local area, which is still the most valuable asset.

And even if you’ve calculated everything through and if you think you found the absolute best time to buy a home – make sure it’s also in line with your very own expectations and of course, your budget. Time is money, but making right decision is gold.